Princeton Tops No. 19 Minnesota State for Fifth Straight

Friday, December 16

7:00 PM

Princeton University

7-7-1

MSU Mankato

10-7-2

Team	1	2	3	F
Minnesota State	0	0	1	1
Princeton	2	3	1	6

Photo by: Princeton Athletic Communications

Princeton Tops No. 19 Minnesota State for Fifth Straight

December 16, 2016 | Men's Ice Hockey

Box Score

The Princeton men's hockey team had six different goal scorers as the Tigers defeated No. 19 Minnesota State 6-1 on Friday in Game 1 of the two-game series. The win is the Tigers' fifth straight and fifth over a ranked team.

The teams will battle is out again tomorrow night at 7 p.m., at Hobey Baker Rink.

"We have to be expecting a big game tomorrow," Princeton goaltender Colton Phinney said. "They came at us hard tonight, they'll going to come at us even harder tomorrow. To travel all this way and to lose one like that they're going to do everything they can and we have to be ready." Phinney made 26 saves in net as Princeton outshot MSU 37-27.

The Tigers grabbed a 2-0 lead in the first period before pushing it to 5-0 in the second.

Senior defender Quin Pompi got things rolling with an outlet pass to sophomore Ryan Kuffner. Kuffner found Alex Riche on the right wing and he skated towards the goal and put one of net. The shot was stopped by the pad of Cole Huggins but came right back to Kuffner who buried the second chance at 10:55.

The Tigers' fourth line had an excellent shift and put Princeton up 2-0 at 18:50. Ben Foster set up Garrett Skrbich but Huggins made a monster stop. Ryan Siiro got the puck in the slot and it deflected off a player and out to the left side where Skrbich collected and put it on frame. Foster put away the rebound, again as it came off the pad of Huggins.

Junior Eric Robinson converted a power-play opportunity at 9:19 of e the second with Tommy Davis and Liam Grande assisted. Tigers worked the puck around the triangle with Robinson taking the final strike at the right post. Less than two minutes later it was Grande with the goal, as he redirected a Joe Grabowski shot.

Skrbich was credited with the team's fifth goal at 14:56 of the second, when he got a pass from Max Becker and hit the post before deflecting off a defender and into the goal.

Senior David Hallisey capped off the Princeton scoring with his sixth tally of the year at 10:21 of the third. He deked his man at the blue line and shot through traffic for the five-hole goal. Cressey and Kuffner earned the assists.

Sean Flanagan stripped Phinney of a shutout with a goal at 12:29. He rifled a shot from top of the point and over the shoulder of a screened Phinney. Teammates Marc Michaelis and Josh French played catch before sending the puck to Flanagan at the blue line.

Princeton closed out the game on the power-play after Zeb Knutson was given a five-minute major for kneeing and a game misconduct at 15:01.

Princeton was 2 for 7 on the power play while MSU was 0 for 4.

Notes:
This is the first time Princeton has won five consecutive games since the 2010-11 season
The last time Princeton had five or more wins over ranked teams was in 2008-09 (Northeastern, Minnesota State, Nebraska-Omaha, Cornell twice and Yale)